TV News LIES

The Justice Department on Friday rescinded a Biden-era policy that provided protections to journalists in leak investigations, paving the way for authorities to once again use subpoenas and compel testimony from reporters in probes targeting leakers.

"Federal government employees intentionally leaking sensitive information to the media undermines the ability of the Department of Justice to uphold the rule of law, protect civil rights, and keep America safe. This conduct is illegal and wrong, and it must stop," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an internal memo issued on Friday and obtained by NPR.

She said the DOJ's policy allows for subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to get information and testimony from journalists. Such actions must be approved by DOJ leadership and journalists must get advance notice of them. The actions also must be as narrow as possible to avoid interfering with news gathering or "potentially protected materials," the memo states.

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A federal judge on Tuesday found the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Voice of America (VOA) and affiliated news services likely were unlawful, indefinitely blocking the shuttering of the government-funded news outlet and affiliated news services.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered VOA’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), to restore VOA and other outlets under the USAGM’s umbrella and barred the agency from preventing them from serving as “consistently reliable and authoritative” news sources, as is required by law.

Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer of CBS News' "60 Minutes," is stepping down over concerns about editorial independence, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters on April 22.

Owens' departure follows a monthslong legal battle with President Donald Trump, who sued CBS in October 2024 over a "60 Minutes" interview with his Democratic rival for the White House, former Vice President Kamala Harris. Earlier this month, the case entered mediation.

"Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it. To make independent decisions based on what was right for '60 Minutes,' right for the audience," Owens wrote in a note to the "60 Minutes" staff. After defending the show "from every angle, over time with everything I could," he has elected to step aside.

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You’ve seen in the past what happens when our two hosts, Mehdi and Owen Jones, are outspoken in front of a camera, but what happens when they’re let loose in front of a live audience of hundreds? Zeteo kicked off our one-year anniversary multi-city tour by taping this episode of ‘Two Outspoken’ with a fantastic crowd of our subscribers in London!

“It's our first event of our five-city tour… It's amazing to be starting the tour in London with you. And I would say this: in the UK, we have built up a presence, slowly but surely, challenging a lot of what's going on,” Mehdi tells the lively audience in Notting Hill, in the video above.

The head of a U.S.-funded Arabic-language television and online news outlet that claims a 30 million-strong audience in the Middle East and North Africa terminated most staff and curtailed TV programming Saturday, accusing the Trump administration and Elon Musk of having “irresponsibly and unlawfully” cut off funding.

In notices to Al Hurra news staffers about their dismissals, chief Jeffrey Gedmin said he had given up on the U.S. administration’s freeze lifting anytime soon for the congressionally approved money for Al Hurra and its U.S.-funded Arabic language sister organizations.

Gedmin accused Kari Lake, President Donald Trump’s appointee to the American government agency overseeing Al Hurra, Voice of America and other U.S.-funded news programming abroad, of dodging his efforts to speak with her about the funding cutoff.

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A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump White House to let Associated Press journalists return to the Oval Office and other spaces immediately to cover news events, ruling it was unlawful to block the news service in a dispute over its choice of words.

Even so, an AP reporter and photographer were turned back from joining a reporting pool on a presidential motorcade early Tuesday evening, almost two hours after the decision came down.

The AP had angered the White House because it refused to call the Gulf of Mexico by President Trump's preferred name for it: the Gulf of America. The AP acknowledges in its coverage that the U.S. government now calls it the Gulf of America, but the news service still relies on the more familiar, traditional designation — especially as the AP serves clients internationally.

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